Ken waved a hand at her and rolled the heart monitor down to the window. Dale nodded, picked it up, and lowered it outside.
“Thanks,” Ken said with smile.
Dale barely looked at him.
With a sigh, Ken moved down the hallway and checked his map. There was supposed to be a supply room at the end of a short hallway that branched off from the main corridor. Charlotte had provided a list of medications she wanted f
rom the room.
Edging toward the end of the hallway, he looked down the shorter hall and saw two more sets of double doors. The emergency lights made the windows in them glow an eerie red.
“Cover me,” Ken ordered Lenore.
Holding his spear firmly in one hand and his map in the other, he moved down the hallway, keeping close to the wall. The door to the supply room was near the very end. Beyond the double doors was another hallway to. . .
He unfolded the map just as he reached the double doors.
. . . the emergency room.
Heart pounding, he looked up into the face of a zombie snarling on the other side of the glass. Ken’s gaze swept down length of the doors. They were unchained.
The door burst open so hard that when it hit him, he was slammed into the wall. Falling sideways, he lost his spear. Ken was trapped, wedged into the tiny area between the door and the wall. He was in a perfect little triangle of hell.
Ken felt tears spring into his eyes as he cowered in the tiny sliver of space.
The zombies were snarling at him through the window as they pushed hard against the door, pressing him into the corner. His body barely fit into the space and the pressure was beginning to cut off his breathing.
He heard Lenore screaming and he cried out in fear. The twisted dead zombie faces pressed hard against the glass, teeth champing hard together. Blood and spittle smeared the slowly cracking glass.
Trembling violently, he felt his body being pinched as the space behind the door grew smaller.
He was going to die.
The first gunshot made him jump. The volley made him hopeful. The distorted gruesome zombie faces turned away toward the shooters. With loud moans, they began to shamble down the hall. Finally, Ken managed to get a breath as the undead staggered away from the door.
At the last moment, he realized the door would swing closed now that the zombies were not holding it. He would be exposed. Grabbing the door firmly with his fingers, he held it in place the best he could. More zombies staggered past him, moving toward those shooting. His sweat slicked fingers slipped on the handle.
One zombie noticed him through the smeared glass and reached out. It was an old man, his face eaten away on one side and his throat shredded into dried strips of flesh. Instead of pushing the door toward Ken, he began to try to pull it away.
“No, no, no,” Ken whispered, struggling to hold on. His adrenaline rush had left him now and he felt weak as a babe.
The zombie persisted, its slow movements agonizingly terrifying. Ken could hear its bones cracking and its muscles tearing with the exertion, but it didn’t feel pain. It gripped the side of the door firmly and began to pull it outward. Ken tried to hold onto the door, but his fingers were so wet, they slipped free. Falling back into the corner, Ken screamed as the zombie reached down for him.
“Die, fucker,” Lenore said in her low voice from behind the zombie.
The zombie lurched forward and fell onto Ken.
Ken began to scream in terror, then realized it was dead. A bolt had shattered the back of its head. The rotting brains slid out in a slimy pile as he shoved the creature off him and struggled to get up.
Grabbing Ken’s arm, Lenore pulled him to his feet. “Run!”
He ran with her, stumbling and sliding over the dead bodies littering the floor. He heard growls behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see zombies staggering along behind them. The undead were reaching out with desperate hands as their mouths groaned in hunger.
Running down the hallway, Lenore guided him to the open window. She pushed him forward and it was Dale who lifted him up and through it.
Ken clung to him relishing the moment, then Dale set him down and shoved him toward the moving van. Lenore was heavier and harder to lift through the window and the zombies were almost to her, when she finally fell out onto the dry grass. Grabbing her hand, Dale tugged her after him as the zombies filled the window and began to tumble out.
Standing next to the truck, Linda fired at zombies, her shotgun barking loudly.